The McGowan Government will deliver $11 million to create more specialist positions to bolster the frontline response to family and domestic violence (FDV).
The 34 new Family Safety Officers will enhance Family and Domestic Violence Response Teams, which are also comprised of police and child protection workers.
They will work together to provide an early co-ordinated response when the WA Police are called out to FDV incidents, handling case management of the highest risk perpetrators and most vulnerable victim-survivors in the community.
The new workers will be phased in over three years, beginning with an initial roll-out of 14 workers across seven metropolitan and regional teams throughout 2023-24.
Importantly, there will be a focus on providing culturally responsive services for Aboriginal people and families, including through intensive family support.
The focus on Aboriginal families recognises the over-representation of Aboriginal people, particularly women and children, as victim-survivors of serious family violence assaults.
It will be facilitated in part through the employment of Aboriginal people to Family Safety Officer positions.
The new positions will help to relieve frontline staff – who are jointly responsible for triaging on average of 48,000 reports of family and domestic violence to police every year – and builds on $7.7 million in the 2022-23 State Budget to enhance the Family and Domestic Violence Response Teams model.
The announcement coincides with the annual 16 Days in WA – Stop Violence Against Women campaign, which takes place from 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to 10 December (Human Rights Day).
As stated by Premier Mark McGowan:
“Violence in the home is never acceptable, and we all have a role to play in ending violence against women and children.
“This new investment is an important step forward for helping to keep the most vulnerable victim-survivors in our community safe.
“My Government has made addressing family and domestic violence a priority – investing more than $150 million to keep victims safe, hold perpetrators to account and stop violence against women before it starts.”
As stated by Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Minister Simone McGurk:
“There’s no doubt that family and domestic violence is a major problem in WA. Last financial year WA police received on average one report of family violence every 12 minutes – and alarmingly many more cases aren’t reported.
“By creating new specialist positions we’re boosting our frontline response to family and domestic violence. It will ensure there’s an early co-ordinated response following a police call-out, which could make all the difference.
“By identifying high-risk perpetrators and assessing patterns of behaviour that are putting women and families at risk, we’re working hard to hold those responsible to account.”
As stated by Police Minister Paul Papalia:
“Our police do tremendous work in responding to family violence incidents, and the addition of Family Safety Officers will help to ensure the best possible response to each case.
“Our Government is doing everything we can to tackle family and domestic violence.
“That includes our new firearm prohibition orders, which take legal access to guns off some of our worst domestic violence offenders.
“No domestic violence offender should have access to a gun, and that’s what our new gun laws will seek to do.”
